By the end of the week, the king and queen had made the decision, despite Charlotte’s strenuous objections. She was only slightly mollified when they told her she could take her favorite horse with her. And to emphasize the validity of their plans for her, a larger scale attack occurred again, targeting the center of the city, which strengthened the king’s resolve to send Charlotte away.
The king asked the Home Office to provide the papers they needed to protect Charlotte’s identity. The earl and countess knew who she was, and had promised to tell no one, and with new identity papers she would be using the name Charlotte White, not Windsor, which would give her anonymity.
The plan was explained to both of Charlotte’s sisters the night before she left, and Charlotte sat with them and their parents silently, with tears in her eyes, trying to be brave. Princess Alexandra put her arms around her, to comfort her, and Princess Victoria smiled wickedly, delighted to be rid of her younger sister for a year.
“I hope they don’t treat you like Cinderella, and have you sweeping out the hearths. They’ve probably lost their help like everyone else. Will you really be able to keep the secret of who you are?” Victoria said meanly, obviously in doubt.
“She’ll have to,” her father answered for her. “It wouldn’t be safe for her there if everyone knew who she was. We intend to say that she is being sent away to the country, like many children, but we will not reveal where she is. No one will discover her identity, and only the earl and countess and Charlotte will know.”
“You’ll be back before you know it,” her older sister reassured her kindly, and came to her bedroom later that night to bring Charlotte some of her own favorite sweaters to take with her, and several books. She took a little gold bracelet with a gold heart on it off her own arm and put it on her sister’s wrist. “I’ll miss you terribly,” Alexandra said and meant it. She had been protective of her since the day Charlotte was born. Victoria had often been a thorn in their sides, but Charlotte had a happy disposition, and Alexandra was a gentle soul, and stronger than she appeared. She would have to be one day when she was the sovereign, after their father was no longer king. Victoria had a jealous nature, and had often been envious of both her older and younger sister. She resented the easy bond they shared.
Alexandra was as dark as Charlotte was fair. Victoria had red hair, and all three of them had delicate aristocratic features, typical of their bloodline. Both of Charlotte’s sisters, and her parents, were considerably taller than she. Like her great-great-grandmother Queen Victoria, Charlotte was barely five feet tall, but perfectly proportioned. She was just very small, and very graceful.
* * *
—
The family gathered the next morning in the queen’s private sitting room to say goodbye to Charlotte. Charles Williams, the king’s secretary, and her elderly governess Felicity had been assigned to make the trip with her. Both were trustworthy with the secret of the princess’s whereabouts for the next ten or eleven months. The earl and countess were expecting them after the four- or five-hour drive from the city. They drove in Charles Williams’s personal car so as not to attract attention. He had a simple Austin, and there were tears on Charlotte’s cheeks when she got into the backseat. A moment later, they drove away, and rolled circumspectly through the gates of the palace, as Charlotte wondered when she would see her home again. She had a terrible sense of foreboding that she would never be back. But everyone in London felt that way now, living from day to day, with bombs falling all night long and their homes and loved ones disappearing and dying.
“It’s just for a year,” she whispered to herself, to stay calm, as they drove past newly ruined buildings on their way out of the city. She had her medicine with her, but they kept the windows rolled up so she wouldn’t need it, but either from the emotion of leaving her family or the dust outside, her chest felt so tight she could hardly breathe. She closed her eyes as she thought of her parents and sisters, fighting valiantly to make herself stop crying.
Charlotte dozed on and off during the long drive from London to Yorkshire. Felicity, her old governess, had brought a picnic basket with things for them to eat. Military Intelligence had advised Charles Williams that it would be best not to stop at pubs or restaurants along the way in case Her Royal Highness might be recognized, and give people a hint as to where she was going. An announcement was going to be made in a day or two that she had been sent to the country for an extended time, to avoid the London bombings, until her next birthday. Both the Home Office and MI5 were anxious not to give any clues to her whereabouts in Yorkshire. They didn’t want that information falling into German hands either, which was another factor they had to consider. The Germans capturing the princess or worse, killing her, would have decimated British morale, and the royal family.
Charlotte ate the watercress and cucumber sandwiches the cook had prepared for her, along with some sliced sausage, which was a rare delicacy now, even on the queen’s table. She fell asleep several times, bored with watching the countryside slide by.
Eventually, they reached the rolling hills of Yorkshire. It was a warm sunny day. She looked at the cows and horses and sheep in their pastures, and tried to imagine what her life in Yorkshire would be like. Her horse, Pharaoh, had been sent down with the assistant stable master and one of the stable boys three days before, and when they returned, they reported that the spirited Thoroughbred Charlotte liked to ride had settled well into his new home. He seemed to like the grazing land available to him. There was only one very old man, previously retired, and a fourteen-year-old boy managing the stables at Ainsleigh Hall, the Hemmingses’ estate, and the Earl of Ainsleigh’s seat. They had reported that there were few horses left in the stables. There was one hunter for the Hemmings boy to ride, and a few older horses. Neither the earl nor the countess rode anymore. The earl had been master of the hunt, but all of that ended with the onset of the war, and the countess had had a bad fall ten years before, the ancient stable master told them, broken her leg badly and hadn’t ridden since. It reminded Charlotte of what Charles had told them, that the Hemmingses were not young. Their son, Henry, had come to them as a surprise late in life, when the countess was forty-nine. She was sixty-seven now, and the earl in his early seventies.
Charles had mentioned that the boy was the love of their life, and they were dreading when he would leave and go to war in a few months. He had joined an infantry regiment, and was waiting to be called up right after his eighteenth birthday, which wouldn’t be long now. By Christmas, he’d be gone, and the Hemmingses would be left with their two young female guests for company.
Charlotte knew almost nothing about the girl who’d been staying there for two years, only that she came from the East End of London, and both her parents had been killed in the bombings right after she left. She was an orphan now, like so many other British children. She was the same age as Charlotte, which would be pleasant for her, if they got along, and Charlotte couldn’t imagine why they wouldn’t.